Making a mission statement

A personal mission statement is a brief summary of your life focus. As such, it is larger than a career and much bigger than a job. And while it connects to your deepest convictions, it adds more information. Your statement is unique to you. It serves to direct your entire life by identifying the larger dreams and goals that drive you.

How do you make a mission statement?

It isn’t easy. Don’t expect it to be easy. You likely won’t find a quick formula or method to produce one. Although here is a suggestion: Give yourself, say, five years to live a busy, shallow, frantic, and non-reflective life. Then, stop and intensely reflect on the futility of the past five years. Meditate long enough to become good and frustrated. At this point, pull out a piece of paper and write down what you would much rather be doing with your life.

What does a mission statement look like?

My larger goal is to help restore Western civilization as a light in God’s world by encouraging the development of healthy and growing Christian communities and by expanding the influence of Christian individuals and organizations. At the same time, I hope to inspire people everywhere to develop their God-given potential for the common good.

Why bother working on a mission statement?

While there are likely many reasons, here are a few to consider:

1. To identify larger goals

A mission statement, or whatever you feel like calling it, will help you spend your time and focus your energy on something significant. Each person reading this is small and limited and can’t do everything. That being the case, what are you going to do with your life? How will you spend your time? Decisions must be made.

Writing down significant goals amounts to saying, “I am going to aim for this and not that.” So if you are tired of drifting along, doing a little of everything or a lot of nothing, you might want to work on your mission statement.

2. To set personal boundaries

A mission statement functions like a personal boundary. In other words, it is like a fence that separates your yard from your neighbour’s. For the most part, what your neighbour does on his land is up to him. If George began enriching uranium in his garage and building nuclear missiles pointed at you…now, that might be different. Usually, though, what George does over there is up to him and what you do – in your yard – is up to you. That’s how it works.

Do you ever feel like you are living someone else’s life? If so, you might need to have a look at your fence. Is it still there? Does it need repair? Take the time to establish your personal boundaries by formally identifying your life direction.

3. To discover core convictions

A mission statement will force you to think about what you believe. Unless, of course, you adamantly refuse and choose not to. Although that may be difficult. But do you really want to live a random and arbitrary life? The catchy slogan, “Practice random acts of kindness” could just as easily have been, “Practice random acts of cruelty!”

Sure, having strong convictions does not necessarily result in more of heaven here on earth. It all depends on what you truly believe. Look at Mali. But a widespread “whatever” mentality is good news if you were hoping for a little more hell. So keep asking “Why?” until you get answers. Go from there.

The short answer, is that it is a good idea to write a mission statement because this is another excercise that could help you reach your true potential.

Attempting to write a mission statement makes sense once you realize that writing is the process by which people usually discover things they don’t aleady know.

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Just a thought

Questions to consider: What do you enjoy doing the most? What are you interested in? And what are you good at? How have you been affirmed by others in the past? If you could do one thing, what would you do? Based on your life so far, what should you do next?